No he was not murdered; he committed suicide rather than face jail and fight. Using hyperbolic language and calling a suicide murder doesn't do anything useful.
He didn't have to commit suicide, that was his choice, you cannot blame his choice on those prosecuting him. People get prosecuted every day and serve time and don't go and kill themselves. He was not murdered. Murder means an unlawful killing; prosecutors did not unlawfully kill Aaron, he did that himself.
He was suffering from depression and suicidal ideation. He wasn't in a sound state of mind necessary to make a choice about killing himself. He died from depression. The circumstances merely contributed to that.
The reasoning behind the "murder" rhetoric isn't entirely wrong. That he wasn't treated any different from any other suspect doesn't mean the way he was treated didn't contribute to his death.
If a suspect dies from law enforcement SOP due to a pre-existing health condition (e.g. tackling someone who already has trouble breathing) we tend to be outraged about that, SOP or not. In this case the health condition was depression with suicidal ideation -- it's not unreasonable to blame the behaviour of the prosecutors for bringing about his death even if the same behaviour wouldn't have led to the death of a healthier suspect.
Personally I think this is more of a failure of mental health care than of the prosecution -- although one could debate whether their indifference to his condition, or the general politics involved in their decisions, is indicative of other problems. He should have been under professional mental care and counselling. Prosecutors aren't mental health care professionals -- they're not qualified to judge his stability or risk to himself.
> Carmen Ortiz as the prosecutor was the law at that moment
No, she was a prosecutor attempting to apply the law; rather than have his day in court, Aaron chose suicide. It is the judge and jury that are the law and Aaron never saw them.
> so it is a circular reasoning and sophistry to say that killing Aaron Swartz was not unlawful
It is nothing of the sort.
> And it was Carmen Ortiz' choice to bring Aaron into a position where he didn't see any other escape than suicide.
That's still Aaron's fault, not hers, he could have chosen to have his day in court and she could have lost. We'll never know because his will was too weak to even face the possibility of a trial. Committing suicide to avoid a trial is never the prosecutors faults.
It's not unreasonable to choose death over living under an unjust and corrupt regime, whose laws you don't agree with. In fact, there are many people in the world today who make that very choice.
I'm assuming you've never had a helpless moment where you truly felt powerless. In that moment, even death seems preferable to a life where you are helpless.
Personally, I would rush head on into the barrels of guns pointed at me, rather than live with my head bowed and my spirit broken.
> It's not unreasonable to choose death over living under an unjust and corrupt regime, whose laws you don't agree with.
Who said it was? I said it wasn't murder. Aaron killed himself, that is an indisputable fact of the case. No one agrees with all the laws of the country, anywhere on the planet; that's life everywhere. He didn't choose to die over the corrupt regime; he chose to die to avoid facing jail, he was just fine living in the corrupt regime before jail looked like the final option.
> Personally, I would rush head on into the barrels of guns pointed at me, rather than live with my head bowed and my spirit broken.
Brave words, but they're just words; people react differently when actually faced with such circumstances.
That's not a prosecutor's job to worry about the mental state of a defendant. It's their job to prosecute the case if the evidence is there, and it was. The defense can worry about the defendants state of mind, that's part of their job. This prosecutor was overzealous in the charges being made, but there's no doubt they had a strong case against him and he was guilty of a felony.
I think it's just in sharp contrast of how say top officers of major banks that laundered 378.4bn USD in drug money were treated (Wachovia, Wells Fargo ...).
>It's not unreasonable to choose death over living under an unjust and corrupt regime, whose laws you don't agree with. In fact, there are many people in the world today who make that very choice.
You know we have this thing called planes right? In no way was Aaron forced to stay in the US.
> It's not unreasonable to choose death over living under an unjust and corrupt regime
You presumably live under the same regime, yet here you are, breathing and posting. Not at all rushing into gun barrels?
What gives, man?
> I'm assuming you've never had a helpless moment where you truly felt powerless. In that moment, even death seems preferable to a life where you are helpless.
Don't extrapolate yourself to others. I have been in that situation, more than once, and it only ever imbued me with a ferocious will to live.
To whom? It's clearly useful to us or we wouldn't be discussing it. I see nothing ambiguous about the situation, he broke the law willingly, got caught, couldn't handle the consequences, so he committed suicide. What's ambiguous about that?
